Chapter 17 C17
Kana returned to Hizashi and Yuko's house.
She carelessly tossed the newly acquired headband onto the living room floor, swallowed a soldier's ration pill with a glass of cold water, and collapsed onto the soft bed in her room. She interrupted the system's incoherent ramblings caused by its extreme emotional fluctuations: "I'm going to sleep. If anyone comes to examine me—specifically, the Caged Bird Seal—wake me up. If they're just visiting, ignore them."
The system, at this moment showing almost pity and boundless indulgence towards Kana, immediately softened its voice: "You should rest well."
Kana slept straight through until the next morning.
She pressed her temples, ignoring the headband that had been placed neatly on the bedside table, and walked straight to the mirror. She removed the bandage, and the person in the mirror touched the greenish-blue mark on her forehead, like a crack in jade, and complained, "It's really ugly."
Yuko had furnished the room with everything she needed. Following Yuko's arrangement habits, Kana took out a pair of scissors from the top shelf of the cabinet, cut her own bangs, and then pinned the beaded necklace Itachi had given her to her forehead to hold her hair down. She finally looked a little more comfortable.
As for the headband, she never intended to wear it on her head in the first place—because it didn't look good.
The reasons for taking it are twofold: first, the boring life at the Ninja Academy no longer needs to be tolerated after the Cursed Seal is acquired; second, to make some people—specifically the village's top leaders—feel guilty; and finally, to demonstrate their value to the main family, making them think twice before using the Caged Bird Seal to teach others a lesson.
The system first reported to her about how Hiyashi and Yuko had taken turns watching over her bedside the previous night, and then, trying its best to control the signal fluctuations, said: "Congratulations, task performer, on completing the second decomposition task. Please claim your reward!"
It had tried its best, but the exclamation mark still betrayed its excitement.
It felt deep regret for having secretly disliked, complained about, and blamed the idle behavior of the taskers.
Its initial success rate analysis was indeed correct!
Having 100 mission takers is its good fortune, a reward for its diligent and conscientious work 99 times—even though it failed.
Kana remained unmoved by the system's barrage of compliments.
Why would someone as pragmatic as her stubbornly cling to illusion magic without bloodline protection, a skill destined to prevent her from ever becoming number one? Why waste her time playing the flute in the clan's territory every day? Why move her illusion magic training base back to the clan's territory? Why waste a stage reward to exchange for illusion magic abilities? Why hang the bell on Neji before entering the dungeon?
If performing the procedure on the spot is too risky, then it's better to boil the frog in lukewarm water.
She cast an illusion on them for three years, gradually and subtly infiltrating their memories so that, three years later, she could alter them without anyone noticing. Illusions require a medium to activate them, and the bell was that medium.
Genjutsu is a type of ninjutsu that consumes a lot of mental energy because it requires controlling too many people at once—even the trashy main family has to mobilize so many people just in case they want to inscribe a curse seal on a child, which causes a throbbing pain in the head and also consumes a lot of chakra.
To ensure her physical condition was bad enough to prove the success of the cursed seal, she even found a partner beforehand—now a friend—and fought with him, consuming a large amount of chakra. That's why she looked so pale after squeezing out her remaining chakra to set up the genjutsu.
As for the curse mark on his forehead, it was painted with custom-made pigments and can only be washed off with special solvents.
This was originally requested from Kurama Sa, because Sa's illusion magic requires painting to be realized, and the better the quality of the paint, the more it would enhance his performance. The Kurama clan has always been generous in providing him with the best in this regard.
After the family members are marked with the curse mark, they will cover it up tightly with something to reduce the chance of it being discovered. Moreover, the mark can be repainted over time if it fades.
Fixing Neji's hair was simple. He was completely unguarded with her, so he just used an illusion to knock her down, forced her head down, and redrawn it—just like he did in the dungeon yesterday.
However, Neji is too young, and his mental strength and vigilance are easily seen through by the old fox. Therefore, Kana also cast an illusion on him, making him think that he was trapped in the Caged Bird Seal. In order not to leave any flaws, he will also react when he sees the hand seals of the main family activating the spell.
Kana didn't plan to tell him until the time was right.
She herself also needed to appear as if she were restricted by the cursed seal, and she had to put up with that bunch of trash from the main family for a while longer—good, she was starting to get annoyed.
After clapping for a while, the system calmed down and began to review the situation in preparation for writing the year-end report: The tasker looked lazy and indolent, only thinking about running away and getting reborn. When did he start planning all this?
This plan existed even before she decided to learn genjutsu from Kurama and Uchiha.
She chose to use a musical instrument because using sound as a medium to cast illusions was less restricted by spatial limitations—she simply didn't have that many opportunities to get close to so many people in the main family.
The Hyuga clan's tolerance of her playing the flute was based on the fact that "her mother loved the sound of the flute when she was alive," but this was actually because her mother learned to play the flute because she showed interest in it during her first birthday celebration.
She started practicing the flute within her clan before she mastered illusion magic in order to make her later actions less abrupt. Even if someone noticed at first, she genuinely didn't do anything wrong. After dispelling their suspicions, she continued to use methods that had been proven harmless, so as not to attract the attention of others.
Her unremarkable and taciturn behavior since childhood was not only to avoid graduating early and being captured to carve curses, but also to make them think that she had no ability, was not worth paying too much attention to, and therefore had no sense of caution towards her.
It's fastened, all of it is fastened, perfectly sealed.
System: Wow, wow, I exclaimed.
Kana satisfied the system's curiosity: "I started doing it because I was bored. Anyway, if I don't want to do it anymore, giving up is just a matter of a moment."
System: ...I almost forgot, the mission taker hasn't given up on the idea of being reincarnated as soon as possible.
It can only offer a small incentive to keep her here: "The Pain Shielder has been issued to you." It can not only eliminate the tasker's psychological pain sensitivity, but also adjust the pain perception according to the tasker's needs.
"The reward pool is now open. Please draw the remaining two mission rewards."
【Tyka's Kiss】: Blessed by Lady Luck, you have a 1% chance of achieving 99% success. May all your wishes come true. (Note: You only have three chances, and this only increases the success rate by a variable amount; it cannot guarantee 100% success. Please use it with caution.)
Luck is an unpredictable thing, and spending money won't save you. Luck is a mysterious and unpredictable phenomenon, yet it certainly exists in the grand scheme of things. Kana is the type with only average luck, so this is actually a pretty good prize for her.
But the other one seems rather ordinary – the communicator.
To better reflect the realities of the world, it was also transformed into a scroll.
The functionality is rather limited, essentially just an email service that can only send text messages point-to-point, and it also has memory issues.
If these two rewards hadn't been released one after the other, Kana might have used [Tika's Kiss] to try and get a third prize.
She gave one of the communication scrolls to Itachi.
After careful analysis, it was found that her interpersonal relationships were extremely barren, like an endless desert, and she really had no one to give her.
She wrote "Uchiha Itachi" on her scroll, and the same words slowly appeared on the scroll that was opened in his hand.
“…Concentrate your chakra at your fingertips and cross out the words, like this…” Kana explained while demonstrating. “At the same time, the words on my side will also disappear, so I know you’ve read it and it doesn’t take up any space.” The scroll is only so long, and if you don’t cross it out in time, it will fill up quickly.
“You just injected it with activated chakra—I already did it beforehand, so only we can see what’s on it, so you can rest assured about its confidentiality.”
"How are you?"
Kana was taken aback. "I thought you were going to ask me where I got this scroll?"
"It's ugly, don't look at it."
Itachi's outstretched hand stopped an inch from her forehead, his fingers slowly curling back into a fist. "Do you need to talk to someone?"
You said it yourself, that a friend is someone you "talk to when you're too tired, ask for help when you're in trouble, and seek companionship when you're in pain."
Kana thought for a moment, "I don't want to lie to you, but there are some things I really can't tell you right now—it's better for both of us this way."
"But what I can tell you is that overall it's not bad."
“As for companionship…” Kana looked into his eyes, “aren’t you already doing that?”
When a person feels no sense of belonging to the world they live in, every breath they take is exhausting.
She smiled. "That's enough."
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